Is the economy that bad? Six doggie bag stories.

Most people agree that asking for a doggie bag from a meal ordered in a restaurant is fine. But you'd never believe what some people take home in doggie bags or what they think they're entitled to! Maybe it's the economy. Maybe it's just bad manners. Whatever it is, here are my Top 6 doggie bag stories – and a little inspiration to go with them:

Waiter Darron Cardosa was so amazed that someone would want him to bag up such a small portion of fish (top center) that he photographed it.

Courtesy of Darron Cardosa

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1.
The ridiculously tiny leftover

When someone asked New York City waiter Darron Cardosa to wrap up his leftover fish in May, it was so ridiculously tiny, he felt he needed to document it. So he took this picture for his blog. "It was literally two bites of food,” writes Mr. Cardosa in an e-mail. “I don't get why he didn't just finish it. It was not enough for a lunch or really even a snack. And how was that fish going to taste three hours later? I did it though. It's what we servers do.”

Several years earlier, when he served breakfast at the Marriott in downtown Brooklyn, Cardosa started to clear a plate when the customer asked for a doggie bag. “I thought she was kidding,” he recalls. “There was a half piece of buttered toast that had a bite taken out of it and a tiny bit of fried egg. Perhaps she thought she might have a hankering for some soggy bread and cold runny eggs later in the day. It was hardly worth putting it in the big plastic to-go container."

"Do you have anything smaller than that?" she asked.

“No, we don't," Cardosa retorted, "because they are made for carrying food that consists of more than two bites.”

"She could have just finished her breakfast and saved us both the trouble. Not to mention, saving the earth. Was it really necessary to take a Styrofoam container that would sit in a landfill for the next 20 years just so she could carry home her two bites of sunny side up eggs?”